Languages

Resources

Maria Lipman was the editor in chief of the Pro et Contra journal published by the Carnegie Moscow Center. She was also the expert of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Society and Regions Program.

Lipman served as deputy editor of the Russian weekly newsmagazines Ezhenedel’ny zhurnal, from 2001 to 2003, and Itogi, from 1995 to 2001. She has worked as a translator, researcher, and contributor for the Washington Post’s Moscow bureau and has had a monthly op-ed column in the Washington Post since 2001.

She is the author of “Constrained or Irrelevant: The Media in Putin’s Russia,” (Current History, October 2005); “Putin and the Media,” with Michael McFaul, in Putin’s Russia: Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain, edited by Dale R. Herspring (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); “Managed Democracy in Russia: Putin and the Press?” with Michael McFaul, in Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics (Summer 2001); and “Russia’s Free Press Withers Away,” The New York Review of Books, (May 31, 2001).

Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky’s primary motive is to curry favor with Vladimir Putin. As Putin has shifted gears to a more conservative, anti-Western, and isolationist outlook, scores of his aggressive loyalists have followed the new trend.

The seizure of Crimea is Putin’s personal conquest, as well as a dramatic reinforcement of his regime of personal power. For now Putin has succeeded in halting Russia’s social and economic modernization and has pushed Russia to an anti-modernization course.

Just as any grand event, the Sochi Olympics will soon be over and Russia will remain with itself. Its prospects are uncertain since the economic growth has dropped and the Kremlin’s policy has shifted toward social conservatism.

The anti-gay campaign may have helped the Kremlin to pit the conservative majority against the excessively modernized trouble-makers. But the wave of negative publicity this campaign is generating has taken a heavy toll on the image of Russia in general, and the Sochi Olympics in particular.

Since the collapse of the Cold War order many countries around the world have engaged in wars and revolutions. The outcomes of these battles no longer fit in the good-or-evil framework. What’s more, in today’s disorderly and erratic world even major nations do not have the authority to make such judgments.

This year’s top three “men of the year” include Pope Francis, Vladimir Putin, and Edward Snowden. But if the “people who made history in 2013” were to be chosen, it should be the actual people—those Ukrainians who have gathered in the Kiev Independence Square.

While Vladimir Putin is unlikely to give up power any time soon, the political and economic system he created is incapable of dealing with Russia’s rapidly changing conditions. Crises are likely unavoidable unless Russia changes and modernizes.

Enormous societal and political shifts 20 years ago opened prospects for a new, united Europe. Despite Russia’s role in this peaceful departure from totalitarianism, the country’s course in the subsequent two decades was not so straightforward. While the demolition of the Berlin Wall is no guarantee of success, democratic transformations are a necessary precondition.

It seems unlikely that Russian armed forces will move beyond the Crimean peninsula. The softer and more conciliatory tone taken by Putin could be a result of the determination of the United States and Europe to take action against Russia.

The situation in Ukraine is very unstable and dangerous, and Moscow's support of the delayed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and non-recognition of the new authorities in Kyiv only adds to the tension.

The influx of labor migrants is an economic necessity for Russia, which does not have enough native workforce. But the newness of this migration, coupled with a social distrust of authority, is causing problems.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ushered in a time of momentous social and political change, including in Russia, but Russia’s development followed a different path than that of many Eastern European countries.

A number of major domestic challenges, including violence in the Caucasus, anger over this summer’s wildfires, and the need for significant police reform, face the Russian government as the country moves towards the 2012 presidential elections.

The institution of parenthood is undergoing a transformation in Russia today as parents, bypassing the state and cooperating independently amongst themselves, are quietly helping to undermine statist paternalism.

Under President Putin, Russia’s government was a hybrid regime that combined elements of both democracy and authoritarianism. Two years into Medvedev’s presidency, the basic structure of government has not significantly changed.